Publisher’s Note: I first met Tim Coldwell as SNS was becoming introduced to the entrepreneurial people in and around London. Tim had almost folk-legend status during this time, as he helped to digitize and revolutionize the global printing business. Since then, he has moved from the UK to France, and, more important, begun editing the Global Print Monitor. As part of this new existence came a new interest: understanding the truth behind the financial messes so apparent in the wake of the Global Liquidity Crash and, most recently, the EMU crisis.

Tim maintains a host of regular and realtime conversations with economists, financiers, and bloggers across Europe; I would not be surprised if he has started dreaming in tinyurls. For all these reasons, as the EMU crisis recently heated up I could think of no one more plugged-in to turn to for a European view on a daunting set of realtime European problems.

Luckily for us, Tim’s first move was to include Beate Reszat in this week’s issue. As you’ll see from her bio at the end of this piece, she is eminently qualified to help us understand what’s behind the curtain in this case, and what to expect next.

Because of the immediacy and daily-changing nature of this crisis, we made an editorial decision at SNS to run this issue in the language of Tim’s and Beate’s world: the number of pages of current references in this issue totals in the thousands. While we don’t expect any particular reader to read all of this end-to-end, we do suggest that you read this issue while online. I think we have achieved our goal, thanks to Tim and Beate: the best current description of the EMU Crisis. – mra.